Thermocapillary convection in two-layer systems in the presence of a surface active agent at the interface

Abstract

Convective instability in a layered system due to the thermocapillary effect was investigated in [1–5]. In these studies it was shown that the perturbations responsible for equilibrium crisis may build up either monotonically or in an oscillatory fashion. In [6] the stabilizing effect of a surface active agent (SAA) on thermocapillary instability was established for a layer with a free surface. For layers of infinite thickness the effect of SAA on thermocapillary convection was studied in [7–9]. The present investigation is concerned with thermocapillary convection in a system of two layers of finite thickness in the presence of an SAA. Convection due to the lift force is not considered. It is established that the principal result of the action of the SAA is not the stabilizing effect on the monotonic mode but the appearance of a new type of oscillatory instability.